In political and social sciences, communism (from
LatinLatin communis,
"common, universal")[1][2] is the philosophical, social, political,
and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the
establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order
structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and
the absence of social classes, money[3][4] and the state.[5][6]
CommunismCommunism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly
include
MarxismMarxism and anarchism (anarcho-communism), as well as the
political ideologies grouped around both. All of these share the
analysis that the current order of society stems from its economic
system, capitalism; that in this system there are two major social
classes; that conflict between these two classes is the root of all
problems in society; and that this situation will ultimately be
resolved through a social revolution. The two classes are the working
class—who must work to survive and who make up the majority within
society—and the capitalist class—a minority who derives profit
from employing the working class through private ownership of the
means of production. The revolution will put the working class in
power and in turn establish social ownership of the means of
production, which according to this analysis is the primary element in
the transformation of society towards communism. Critics of communism
can be roughly divided into those concerning themselves with the
practical aspects of 20th century communist states[7] and those
concerning themselves with communist principles and theory.[8]

History
Main article: History of communism
Early communism
The term "communism" was first coined and defined in its modern
definition by the French philosopher and writer Victor d'Hupay. In his
1777 book Projet de communauté philosophe, d'Hupay pushes the
philosophy of the Enlightenments to principles which he lived up to
during most of his life in his bastide of
FuveauFuveau (Provence). This book
can be seen as the cornerstone of communist philosophy as d'Hupay
defines this lifestyle as a "commune" and advises to "share all
economic and material products between inhabitants of the commune, so
that all may benefit from everybody's work".[9]

According to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian
society first emerged in Ancient Greece.[10] The 5th-century Mazdak
movement in Persia (Iran) has been described as "communistic" for
challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the
clergy, for criticizing the institution of private property and for
striving to create an egalitarian society.[11][12] At one time or
another, various small communist communities existed, generally under
the inspiration of Scripture.[13] For example, in the medieval
Christian church some monastic communities and religious orders shared
their land and their other property (see religious and Christian
communism).
Communist thought has also been traced back to the works of the
16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia
(1516), More portrayed a society based on common ownership of
property, whose rulers administered it through the application of
reason. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in
England, where a
PuritanPuritan religious group known as the "Diggers"
advocated the abolition of private ownership of land.[14] In his 1895
Cromwell and Communism,[15]
Eduard BernsteinEduard Bernstein argued that several
groups during the
English Civil WarEnglish Civil War (especially the Diggers) espoused
clear communistic, agrarian ideals and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude
towards these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[15]
Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of
Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Jean
Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, following the upheaval of the
French
RevolutionRevolution communism emerged as a political doctrine.[16]
In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded
communities based on common ownership. However, unlike many previous
communist communities they replaced the religious emphasis with a
rational and philanthropic basis.[17] Notable among them were Robert
Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana (1825), as well as Charles
Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United
States such as
Brook FarmBrook Farm (1841–1847).[17]
In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in
19th-century Europe. As the Industrial
RevolutionRevolution advanced, socialist
critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new
class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous
conditions. Foremost among these critics were
Karl MarxKarl Marx and his
associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new
definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous
pamphlet The Communist Manifesto.[17]
Modern communism

Countries of the world now (red) or previously (orange) having
nominally Marxist–Leninist governments

The 1917 October
RevolutionRevolution in
RussiaRussia set the conditions for the rise
to state power of Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, which was the first
time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The
revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets,
in which the
BolsheviksBolsheviks had a majority.[18][19][20] The event
generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the
Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be
built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist
development. However,
RussiaRussia was one of the poorest countries in
Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority
of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that
RussiaRussia might be
able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule.[21]
The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolshevik
(majority) plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more
fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based
upon the slogans such as "Peace, bread and land" which tapped the
massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First
World War, the peasants' demand for land reform and popular support
for the soviets.[22]
Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were
organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the
broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher
members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party
discipline.[23] The
Great PurgeGreat Purge of 1937–1938 was Joseph Stalin's
attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party.
In the Moscow Trials, many old
BolsheviksBolsheviks who had played prominent
roles during the Russian
RevolutionRevolution of 1917 or in Lenin's Soviet
government afterwards, including Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov and
Bukharin, were accused, pleaded guilty and executed.[24]
Cold War
Main article: Cold War

Countries by GDP (nominal) per capita in 1965 based on a West German
school book (1971)

> 5,000 DM
2,500–5,000 DM
1,000–2,500 DM

500–1,000 DM
250–500 DM
< 250 DM

Its leading role in the
Second WorldSecond WorldWarWar saw the emergence of the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern
Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were
shattered and communist parties played a leading role in many
independence movements. Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland,
HungaryHungary and Romania. A
Marxist–Leninist government was also created under Marshal Tito in
Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of
YugoslaviaYugoslavia from the
CominformCominform which had replaced the
CominternComintern and
TitoismTitoism was branded "deviationist". Albania also became an independent
Marxist–Leninist state after World
WarWar II.[25]
CommunismCommunism was seen as
a rival of and a threat to western capitalism for most of the 20th
century.[26]
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Main article: Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The
Soviet UnionSoviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991. It was a result
of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.[27] The declaration acknowledged
the independence of the former
Soviet republicsSoviet republics and created the
Commonwealth of Independent States, although five of the signatories
ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day,
Soviet President
Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev (the eighth and final leader of the
Soviet Union) resigned, declared his office extinct and handed over
its powers – including control of the Soviet nuclear missile
launching codes – to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That evening
at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last
time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag.[28]
Previously, from August to December all the individual republics,
including
RussiaRussia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before
the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata
Protocol formally establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States
and declaring that the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union had ceased to exist.[29][30]
Present situation
See also: List of anti-capitalist and communist parties with national
parliamentary representation
At present, states controlled by Marxist–Leninist parties under a
single-party system include the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Laos
and Vietnam.
North KoreaNorth Korea currently refers to its leading ideology as
Juche, which is portrayed as a development of Marxism–Leninism.
Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically
important in a number of other countries. The South African Communist
Party is a partner in the African National Congress-led government. In
India, as of March 2018, communists lead the government of only one
state, Kerala. In Nepal, communists hold a majority in the
parliament.[31] The
Communist Party of BrazilCommunist Party of Brazil is a part of the
parliamentary coalition led by the ruling democratic socialist
Workers' Party.
The
People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the
Maoist legacy and along with Laos,
VietnamVietnam and to a lesser degree Cuba
has decentralized state control of the economy in order to stimulate
growth. Chinese economic reforms were started in 1978 under the
leadership of
Deng XiaopingDeng Xiaoping and since then China has managed to bring
down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 6% in 2001.[32]
These reforms are sometimes described by outside commentators as a
regression to capitalism, but the communist parties describe it as a
necessary adjustment to existing realities in the post-Soviet world in
order to maximize industrial productive capacity. In these countries,
the land is a universal public monopoly administered by the state, as
are natural resources and vital industries and services. The public
sector is the dominant sector in these economies and the state plays a
central role in coordinating economic development.
Marxist communism
Marxism

Marxism, first developed by
Karl MarxKarl Marx and Friedrich Engels, has been
the foremost ideology of the communist movement.
MarxismMarxism considers
itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism and rather than
model an "ideal society" based on intellectuals' design, it is a
non-idealist attempt at the understanding of society and history
through an analysis based in real life.
MarxismMarxism does not see communism
as a "state of affairs" to be established, but rather as the
expression of a real movement, with parameters which are derived
completely from real life and not based on any intelligent design.[33]
Therefore,
MarxismMarxism does no blueprinting of a communist society and it
only makes an analysis which concludes what will trigger its
implementation and discovers its fundamental characteristics based on
the derivation of real life conditions.
At the root of
MarxismMarxism is the materialist conception of history, known
as historical materialism for short. It holds that the key
characteristic of economic systems through history has been the mode
of production and that the change between modes of production has been
triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the
Industrial
RevolutionRevolution ushered the world into a new mode of production:
capitalism. Before capitalism, certain working classes had ownership
of instruments utilized in production, but because machinery was much
more efficient this property became worthless and the mass majority of
workers could only survive by selling their labor, working through
making use of someone else's machinery and therefore making someone
else profit. Thus with capitalism the world was divided between two
major classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.[34] These classes
are directly antagonistic: the bourgeoisie has private ownership of
the means of production and earns a profit off surplus value, which is
generated by the proletariat, which has no ownership of the means of
production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the
bourgeoisie.
Historical materialismHistorical materialism goes on and says: the rising bourgeoisie within
feudalism, through the furtherance of its own material interests,
captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property,
only the feudal privileges and with this took out of existence the
feudal ruling class. This was another of the keys behind the
consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, which is
the final expression of class and property relations and also has led
into a massive expansion of production. It is therefore only in
capitalism that private property in itself can be abolished.[35]
Similarly, the proletariat will capture political power, abolish
bourgeois property through the common ownership of the means of
production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie and ultimately
abolishing the proletariat itself and ushering the world into a new
mode of production: communism. In between capitalism and communism
there is the dictatorship of the proletariat, a democratic state where
the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the
basis of universal suffrage.[36] It is the defeat of the bourgeois
state, but not yet of the capitalist mode of production and at the
same time the only element which places into the realm of possibility
moving on from this mode of production.
An important concept in
MarxismMarxism is socialization vs. nationalization.
Nationalization is merely state ownership of property, whereas
socialization is actual control and management of property by society.
MarxismMarxism considers socialization its goal and considers nationalization
a tactical issue, with state ownership still being in the realm of the
capitalist mode of production. In the words of Engels: "[The
transformation [...] into State-ownership does not do away with the
capitalistic nature of the productive forces. [...] State-ownership of
the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but
concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the
elements of that solution".[37] This has led some Marxist groups and
tendencies to label states such as the Soviet Union—based on
nationalization—as state capitalist.[38]
Leninism

Vladimir Lenin's statue in Kolkata, West Bengal

We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and
better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to
work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must
enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other
improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a
few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of
people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The
teachings about this society are called 'socialism'.
–Vladimir Lenin, 1903[39]

LeninismLeninism is the body of political theory, developed by and named after
the Russian revolutionary and later Soviet premier
Vladimir LeninVladimir Lenin for
the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party and the
achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude
to the establishment of socialism.
LeninismLeninism comprises socialist
political and economic theories developed from Marxism, as well as
Lenin's interpretations of Marxist theory for practical application to
the socio-political conditions of the agrarian early-twentieth-century
Russian Empire. In February 1917, for five years
LeninismLeninism was the
Russian application of Marxist economics and political philosophy,
effected and realised by the Bolsheviks, the vanguard party who led
the fight for the political independence of the working class.
Marxism–Leninism,
StalinismStalinism and Trotskyism
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism and Stalinism

Joseph Stalin, 1942

Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism is a political ideology developed by Joseph
Stalin,[40] which according to its proponents is based in
MarxismMarxism and
Leninism. The term describes the specific political ideology which
Stalin implemented in the
Communist Party of the Soviet UnionCommunist Party of the Soviet Union and in a
global scale in the Comintern. There is no definite agreement between
historians of about whether Stalin actually followed the principles of
Marx and Lenin.[41] It also contains aspects which according to some
are deviations from Marxism, such as "socialism in one
country".[42][43]
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism was the ideology of the most
clearly visible communist movement. As such, it is the most prominent
ideology associated with communism.
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism refers to the socioeconomic system and political
ideology implemented by Stalin in the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union and later copied by
other states based on the Soviet model (central planning, one-party
state and so on), whereas
StalinismStalinism refers to Stalin's style of
governance (political repression, cult of personality and the like).
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism stayed after de-Stalinization,
StalinismStalinism did not.
In the last letters before his death, Lenin in fact warned against the
danger of Stalin's personality and urged the Soviet government to
replace him.[44]
MaoismMaoism is a form of
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism associated with Chinese leader
Mao Zedong. After de-Stalinization,
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism was kept in the
Soviet Union, but certain anti-revisionist tendencies such as Hoxhaism
and
MaoismMaoism argued that it was deviated from, therefore different
policies were applied in Albania and China, which became more
distanced from the Soviet Union.
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism has been criticized by other communist and Marxist
tendencies. They argue that Marxist–Leninist states did not
establish socialism, but rather state capitalism.[38] According to
Marxism, the dictatorship of the proletariat represents the rule of
the majority (democracy) rather than of one party, to the extent that
co-founder of
MarxismMarxismFriedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels described its "specific form"
as the democratic republic.[45] Additionally, according to Engels
state property by itself is private property of capitalist nature[46]
unless the proletariat has control of political power, in which case
it forms public property.[47] Whether the proletariat was actually in
control of the Marxist–Leninist states is a matter of debate between
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism and other communist tendencies. To these
tendencies,
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism is neither
MarxismMarxism nor
LeninismLeninism nor the
union of both, but rather an artificial term created to justify
Stalin's ideological distortion,[48] forced into the CPSU and
Comintern. In the Soviet Union, this struggle against
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism was represented by Trotskyism, which describes
itself as a Marxist and Leninist tendency.
Trotskyism
TrotskyismTrotskyism is a Marxist and Leninist tendency that was developed by
Leon Trotsky, opposed to Marxism–Leninism. It supports the theory of
permanent revolution and world revolution instead of the two stage
theory and socialism in one country. It supported proletarian
internationalism and another communist revolution in the Soviet Union,
which Trotsky claimed had become a "degenerated worker's state" under
the leadership of Stalin, in which class relations had re-emerged in a
new form, rather than the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Trotsky and his supporters, struggling against Stalin for power in the
Soviet Union, organized into the
Left OppositionLeft Opposition and their platform
became known as Trotskyism. Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining
control of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin
from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union in 1929.
While in exile, Trotsky continued his campaign against Stalin,
founding in 1938 the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the
CominternComintern In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City on
Stalin's orders.
Trotsky's politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most
importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian
revolution (rather than socialism in one country) and support for a
true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles.
Libertarian Marxism
Libertarian
MarxismMarxism is a broad range of economic and political
philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism.
Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism,[49]
emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism[50] and its derivatives,
such as Stalinism,
MaoismMaoism and Trotskyism.[51] Libertarian
MarxismMarxism is
also critical of reformist positions, such as those held by social
democrats.[52] Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and
Engels' later works, specifically the
GrundrisseGrundrisse and The Civil
WarWar in
France,[53] emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the
working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a
revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation.[54]
Along with anarchism, libertarian
MarxismMarxism is one of the main currents
of libertarian socialism.[55]
Libertarian
MarxismMarxism includes such currents as Luxemburgism, council
communism, left communism, Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Johnson-Forest
tendency, world socialism, Lettrism/Situationism and
operaismo/autonomism and New Left.[56] Libertarian
MarxismMarxism has often
had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists.
Notable theorists of libertarian
MarxismMarxism have included Anton
Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Antonio Negri, Cornelius
Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Guy Debord, Daniel Guérin, Ernesto
Screpanti and Raoul Vaneigem.
Council communism
Main article: Council communism
Council communismCouncil communism is a movement originating in
GermanyGermany and the
NetherlandsNetherlands in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist
Workers Party of Germany.
Council communismCouncil communism continues today as a
theoretical and activist position within both left-wing
MarxismMarxism and
libertarian socialism.
The central argument of council communism, in contrast to those of
social democracy and Leninist communism, is that democratic workers'
councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural
form of working class organization and governmental power. This view
is opposed to both the reformist and the Leninist ideologies, with
their stress on respectively parliaments and institutional government
(i.e. by applying social reforms on the one hand and vanguard parties
and participative democratic centralism on the other).
The core principle of council communism is that the government and the
economy should be managed by workers' councils composed of delegates
elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council
communists oppose state-run authoritarian "state socialism"/"state
capitalism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party",
since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will
necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a
worker's democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of
workers' councils.
Left communism

Rosa Luxemburg

Left communismLeft communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the
communist left, which criticizes the political ideas and practices
espoused—particularly following the series of revolutions which
brought the
First World WarFirst World War to an end—by
BolsheviksBolsheviks and by social
democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more
authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of
Marxism–LeninismMarxism–Leninism espoused by the
Communist InternationalCommunist International after its
first congress (March 1919) and during its second congress
(July–August 1920).[57]
Left communists represent a range of political movements distinct from
Marxist–Leninists (whom they largely view as merely the left-wing of
capital), from anarcho-communists (some of whom they consider
internationalist socialists) as well as from various other
revolutionary socialist tendencies (for example De Leonists, whom they
tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited
instances).[58]
Non-Marxist communism
The dominant forms of communism are based on Marxism, but non-Marxist
versions of communism (such as
Christian communismChristian communism and
anarcho-communism) also exist.
Anarcho-communism
Anarcho-communismAnarcho-communism (also known as libertarian communism) is a theory of
anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property
and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of
production,[59][60] direct democracy and a horizontal network of
voluntary associations and workers' councils with production and
consumption based on the guiding principle: "From each according to
his ability, to each according to his need".[61][62]

Peter Kropotkin, main theorist of anarcho-communism

Anarcho-communismAnarcho-communism differs from
MarxismMarxism rejecting its view about the
need for a state socialism phase before building communism. The main
theorist of anarcho-communism, Peter Kropotkin, argued that a
revolutionary society should "transform itself immediately into a
communist society", that is should go immediately into what Marx had
regarded as the "more advanced, completed, phase of communism".[63] In
this way, it tries to avoid the reappearance of "class divisions and
the need for a state to oversee everything".[63]
Some forms of anarcho-communism such as insurrectionary anarchism are
egoist and strongly influenced by radical individualism,[64][65][66]
believing that anarchist communism does not require a communitarian
nature at all. Most anarcho-communists view anarchist communism as a
way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and
society.[67][68][69]
To date in human history, the best-known examples of an
anarcho-communist society, established around the ideas as they exist
today and that received worldwide attention and knowledge in the
historical canon, are the anarchist territories during the Spanish
RevolutionRevolution and the
Free TerritoryFree Territory during the Russian Revolution.
Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish anarchists during the
Spanish
RevolutionRevolution within the Spanish Civil War, starting in 1936
anarcho-communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante and
AndalusiaAndalusia as well as in the stronghold of
Anarchist CataloniaAnarchist Catalonia before
being brutally crushed by the combined forces of the authoritarian
regime that won the war, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Communist
Party of Spain repression (backed by the Soviet Union) as well as
economic and armaments blockades from the capitalist countries and the
Spanish Republic itself. During the Russian Revolution, anarchists
such as
Nestor MakhnoNestor Makhno worked to create and defend—through the
Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine—anarcho-communism in
the
Free TerritoryFree Territory of the Ukraine from 1919 before being conquered by
the
BolsheviksBolsheviks in 1921.
Christian communism
Christian communismChristian communism is a form of religious communism based on
Christianity. It is a theological and political theory based upon the
view that the teachings of Jesus Christ compel Christians to support
communism as the ideal social system. Although there is no universal
agreement on the exact date when
Christian communismChristian communism was founded, many
Christian communists assert that evidence from the
BibleBible suggests that
the first Christians, including the Apostles, established their own
small communist society in the years following Jesus' death and
resurrection. As such, many advocates of
Christian communismChristian communism argue
that it was taught by Jesus and practiced by the Apostles themselves.
Christian communismChristian communism can be seen as a radical form of Christian
socialism. Christian communists may or may not agree with various
aspects of Marxism. They do not agree with the atheist and
antireligious views held by secular Marxists, but they do agree with
many of the economic and existential aspects of Marxist theory, such
as the idea that capitalism exploits the working class by extracting
surplus value from the workers in the form of profits and the idea
that wage labor is a tool of human alienation that promotes arbitrary
and unjust authority. Like Marxism,
Christian communismChristian communism also holds the
view that capitalism encourages the negative aspects of humans,
supplanting values such as mercy, kindness, justice and compassion in
favor of greed, selfishness and blind ambition.
Criticism
Main articles:
Criticism of communist party ruleCriticism of communist party rule and Criticisms of
Marxism
See also: Anti-communism
Criticism of communism can be divided into two broad categories: those
concerning themselves with the practical aspects of 20th century
communist states[7] and those concerning themselves with communist
principles and theory.[70]
MarxismMarxism is also subject to general criticisms, criticisms related to
historical materialism that it is a type of historical determinism,
the necessary suppression of liberal democratic rights, issues with
the implementation of communism and economic issues such as the
distortion or absence of price signals. In addition, empirical and
epistemological problems are frequently identified.[71][72][73]
See also

Big government
Commons-based peer production
CommunismCommunism by country
Communist party
List of communist parties
Post-scarcity economy
Socialist state
Sociocultural evolution

References
Citations

^ "Communism". Britannica Encyclopedia.
^ World Book, 2008, p. 890.
^ Principles of Communism, Frederick Engels, 1847, Section 18.
"Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been
brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will
disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and
production will so expand and man so change that society will be able
to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain".
^ The ABC of Communism, Nikoli Bukharin, 1920, Section 20.
^ The ABC of Communism, Nikoli Bukharin, 1920, Section 21.
^ George Thomas Kurian, ed. (2011). "Withering Away of the State". The
Encyclopedia of Political Science. CQ Press.
doi:10.4135/9781608712434. ISBN 9781933116440. Retrieved January
3, 2016.
^ a b Bruno Bosteels, The Actuality of
CommunismCommunism (Verso Books, 2014).
^ Raymond C. Taras, The Road to Disillusion: From Critical
MarxismMarxism to
Post-communismPost-communism in
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe (Routledge, 2015).
^ Cassely, 2016 : Aix insolite et secrète JonGlez
p. 192–193 (références Bibliothèque nationale de France).
^
Richard PipesRichard Pipes Communism: A History (2001)
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CommunismCommunism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be
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We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state
of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises
now in existence".
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81–97, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969. "Principles of Communism".
No. 4 – "How did the proletariat originate?".
^ Engels, Friedrich. Marx & Engels Selected Works, Volume One, pp.
81–97, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969. "Principles of Communism".
No. 15 – "Was not the abolition of private property possible at an
earlier time?".
^ Thomas M. Twiss. Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy.
Brill. pp. 28–29.
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"But, the transformation—either into joint-stock companies and
trusts, or into State-ownership—does not do away with the
capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock
companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is
only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to
support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production
against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual
capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially
a capitalist machine—the state of the capitalists, the ideal
personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to
the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become
the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The
workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is
not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to
a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is
not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the
technical conditions that form the elements of that solution".
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King.
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basic tenets of Marxism".
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^ A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891. "Marx
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certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to
power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the
specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat".
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joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership—does not
do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces".
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from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act,
the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of
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^ "
CommunismCommunism is the one which guarantees the greatest amount of
individual liberty—provided that the idea that begets the community
be Liberty, Anarchy ...
CommunismCommunism guarantees economic freedom
better than any other form of association, because it can guarantee
wellbeing, even luxury, in return for a few hours of work instead of a
day's work". Kropotkin, Peter. "
CommunismCommunism and Anarchy". Archived from
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^ This other society will be libertarian communism, in which social
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which these two ideas develop in perfect harmony. Dielo Truda
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Communists". Archived from the original on July 29, 2011.
^ "I see the dichotomies made between individualism and communism,
individual revolt and class struggle, the struggle against human
exploitation and the exploitation of nature as false dichotomies and
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^ Raymond C. Taras, The Road to Disillusion: From Critical
MarxismMarxism to
Post-communismPost-communism in
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^ See M. C. Howard and J. E. King, 1992, A History of Marxian
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Press.
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Scientific Knowledge. Routledge. p. 49.
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